Dancing with the Unknown

1 Corinthians 13:12  “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

Our daughter told me the other day that my illness reminded her of a game show.  Intrigued, (and quite surprised)  I asked her to explain. “Mom, what you’re going through is like Deal or No Deal.  You have something, and the new symptoms you’re experiencing mean something.  Every test they run is like opening a new case to see what it holds, and every time it comes back ‘normal’ it is like it’s ruled out from the big board.  One of these days they’ll figure out what’s in the case you have, and can figure out how to work with it.” 

We joked a bit about, “Gee, where’s the ‘banker’ in all of this?”, but I thought her reflection was really insightful.  Deal or No Deal is a game of the unknown, and trying to guess and know what cannot be seen.  For those who are having symptoms and are not yet diagnosed, or who have diagnoses, but new symptoms, life can be a very big time of not knowing.

Not knowing causes anxiety for most of us.  We Google stuff, we search out answers, we expect to ‘know’ the answers to the questions we have…particularly when it comes to illness.  Our technology has become so refined, the diagnostic tools so remarkable, that we come to expect the answers to be known.

I’ve come to think of Chronic illness as a dance of the unknown.  I wake up in the morning not knowing how I will feel or how many ‘spoons’ I’ll have (see link to Spoon Theory at bottom of page).  I go into a store, or church or one of our kids’ sporting events not knowing if I’ll be able to stay through the whole thing.  I go to bed at night not sure if I’ll wake up with an adrenalin burst that makes me want to paint the whole house (…which, by the way, I’ve never done  on one of those bursts J).  I go into a doctor’s office no knowing if today is the day I get more answers, or if we all decide to keep slowly trying options and pushing forward.

Long-term illness can be very much like seeing in a mirror, dimly.  Or trying to navigate a car through the fog. 

Now, I know this doesn’t sound like much fun, but stay with me here for another minute or two…because this morning as I was pondering this blog post, I found myself encouraged and grateful for the opportunity to dance with the unknown.  In a very odd, and surprising way, the experiences of dealing with the unknown so often, have brought me to realize that the unknown brings delightful things…like this morning, a day of energy that was unexpected and unknown- and I gratefully found myself dancing through what used to be mundane chores.  Dancing with the unknown has given me the opportunity to practice entrusting myself and my family to God’s care every night, in ways I never before would have considered.  Dancing with the unknowns of life has given me the eyes to see, albeit dimly, the opportunities that open up to us in the ‘now’, where in the past I would have waited until I was stronger, healthier, more ready, etc.

Dancing with the unknown has helped me to see that whatever is in the ‘case’ that I have (going with the Deal or No Deal analogy)  that case is still a gift, and I am reminded more often to just simply be thankful for the gift of life…the gift of hearing our kids laugh, our dogs snore in contentment, the rain come down on the roof,   the breeze blow briskly on my face and all the other moments I would have missed before because I would have assumed I ‘knew’ everything.

Dancing with the unknown in our lives is not easy, but it is a dance that we may simply find is the dance of our lives.  It is where we are.

Someday, we will know. Someday we will see clearly.  But for me and for many of us…that is not today.  For today I get to trust that the One who knows me and sees me still holds me in tender care, no matter how much I mess up the ‘dance moves’… and that is the biggest gift of all.

Dancing, knowing God, move us today in your tender care. Amen.